Birds Korea: Birds and Bewilderment

These days, literary theorists love to talk about the way that the words we use and the tales we tell not only convey meaning, but fracture and dissolve it as well. Consider the Osprey, that handsome fish-catching raptor, and the many things we call it.

The Osprey’s Korean name, Mulsuri, translates into “Water-Eagle.” Although technically not an eagle, neither of the Aquila clan nor of the Haliaetus group, the Osprey combines some characteristics of both—the dashing athleticism of a Golden or Imperial Eagle, and the seafaring, fish-loving ways of a White-Tailed or Steller’s Sea Eagle. What results is a species in a family uniquely its own, with an unusually widespread distribution throughout the world—Ospreys are found on all continents except for Antarctica.

Such success is no surprise: Ospreys are big, fast and very good at what they do. Laser eyes, long supple wings, long sturdy legs, x-shaped feet, razor talons, waterproof plumage of chocolate brown and creamy white (even the plumage pattern has a function: it breaks up and disguises the Osprey’s form from fish underwater), a fearless soul—bane to almost any fish in the water. There is nothing in the world quite like an Osprey.

But the words we use and the tales we tell complicate matters. The legend of Ovid tells us a bird story: that Scylla, daughter of Nisus, betrays her father and city by cutting off his special lock of purple hair. She is turned into a Shearwater, and her father into an angry Osprey; both haunt the ocean to this day. Confusingly enough as far as etymology goes, the Osprey’s genus name recalls a different Greek myth (also in Ovid) about an unhappy king of Athens, Pandion. Pandion was father to Procne and Philomela, the Swallow and Nightingale, respectively, of Tereus the Hoopoe’s outrageously bloody tale. Literature’s birds have become a bewildering flock.

But it does not end there. In Chinese mythology, the Osprey is also associated with Ch’in P’ei, a god who conspired with a mountain to murder a river; he was executed for his crimes, then changed into a new type of eagle, the Osprey. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus is pictured as like “the Osprey to the fish, who takes it by sovereignty of nature”—a parallel description of a man’s dominance of a nation and a bird’s mastery of its habitat and prey.

Other etymologies confuse even more. The word Osprey itself derives from the Old French Ossifrage, which means “bone-breaker.” Medieval encyclopedists like Brunetto Latini say this comes from the Osprey’s habit of dropping bones from a great height in order to crack them and get at the marrow. But our fish-eating Osprey does not do this while certain Vultures do. Some sort of mistake has been made.

How to resolve these complexities? Look at the bird. Even then, impressions begin as mixed. To me, the Osprey is simultaneously awkward and graceful: disheveled and sleek at the whim of the wind it rides. But look further, and longer: ride with the bird, and all uncertainties fade away.